Conventional peppermills have the disadvantage in that they are difficult to refill. In addition, their grinding surfaces tend to become clogged impairing their performance unless and until the grinding surfaces are cleaned. Cleaning of the peppermill requires disassembly and reassembly of the peppermill, which are difficult tasks. Moreover, after a period of use, the grinding surfaces become worn requiring replacement of the entire peppermill even though this is the only portion of the peppermill which has deteriorated to any degree.
To overcome these problems, as disclosed in the copending application Ser. No. 088,254 invented by the inventor of this application and filed on Aug. 24, 1987, it was proposed to provide a peppermill "tree", which is a term used in this application meaning a permanent outer casing designed to hold and contain a disposable pepper-grinding cartridge. The cartridge contains the peppercorns to be ground and also is provided with grinding surfaces, which when the peppermill tree is operated will grind the peppercorns and dispense them from the bottom of the peppermill tree on the food to be seasoned. When all of the peppercorns in the cartridge have been ground and dispensed from the cartridge, the cartridge is simply replaced with a new cartridge with fresh peppercorns and with new grinding surfaces. Because the cartridge is designed in a manner to make it inexpensive, the cartridge can be provided for about the same cost that peppercorns in their containers are presently being sold. The peppermill tree of the above-identified copending application is made of molded plastic. "Plastic" as used in this application means "synthetic resin". To provide peppermills of different sizes, extension members are provided to increase the length of the peppermill to the desired size with the size being determined by the number of extension members used. The length of the peppermill is varied by means of extensions instead of molding different sizes to avoid the cost of the different molds which would otherwise be required for the different sizes of peppermills.